Former President Barack Obama campaigning for President-elect Joe Biden — Photo by Chuck Kennedy / Biden for President
Former President Barack Obama has admitted that he used anti-LGBTQ slurs when he was a teenager.
Writing in his new memoir A Promised Land, Obama wrote that he was “ashamed” of his use of slurs such as “fag.”
The LGBTQ ally said that going to college made him aware of the discrimination faced by LGBTQ people, by “opening my heart to the human dimensions of issues that I’d once thought of in mainly abstract terms.”
The former president also revealed that his own great aunt was lesbian and would try to hide her relationship from family members.
“I grew up in the 70s, a time when LGBTQ life was far less visible to those outside the community,” Obama writes, “so that [Obama’s grandmother] Toot’s sister (and one of my favorite relatives), Aunt Arlene, felt obliged to introduce her partner of 20 years as ‘my close friend Marge’ whenever she visited us in Hawaii.”
Margaret Arlene Payne died in 2014, aged 87, with her obituary noting that she was survived by family, including then-President Obama, and her “friend Margery Duffy.”
A Promised Land is the first time that Obama has publicly spoken about his aunt’s sexuality.
In the memoir, published Wednesday, Obama also expands on the anti-gay language he used during his childhood.
“Like many teenage boys in those years, my friends and I sometimes threw around words like ‘fag’ or ‘gay’ at each other as casual put-downs — callow attempts to fortify our masculinity and hide our insecurities,” he writes.
“Once I got to college and became friends with fellow students and professors who were openly gay, though, I realized the overt discrimination and hate they were subject to,” Obama continues. “as well as the loneliness and self-doubt that the dominant culture imposed on them. I felt ashamed of my past behavior — and learned to do better.”
Obama also referenced his focus on LGBTQ rights during his two terms in office, including repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly gay servicemembers, publicly supporting same-sex marriage while running for reelection in 2012, and banning federal contractors from discriminating against against LGBTQ people.
“Alongside abortion, guns, and just about anything to do with race, the issues of LGBTQ rights and immigration had occupied center stage in America’s culture wars for decades,” he writes, “in part because they raised the most basic question in our democracy — namely, who do we consider a true member of the American family, deserving of the same rights, respect, and concern that we expect for ourselves?”
Obama continues: “I believed in defining that family broadly — it included gay people as well as straight, and it included immigrant families that had put down roots and raised kids here, even if they hadn’t come through the front door. How could I believe otherwise, when some of the same arguments for their exclusion had so often been used to exclude those who looked like me?”
Apple has pulled two of China's most popular gay dating apps from its App Store after receiving an order from the country's top internet regulator and censorship agency.
According to Wired, the tech giant removed Blued and Finka from both Apple's iOS App Store and several Android marketplaces over the weekend. New downloads are now blocked, though the apps remain functional for users who already had them installed.
"We follow the laws in the countries where we operate," an Apple spokesperson told Wired in an email. "Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only." The spokesperson added that the apps haven't been available in other countries for some time.
David Urban, a Republican strategist and CNN commentator who served as a senior advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has written an op-ed accusing Democrats of fear-mongering for suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
In his USA Today op-ed, Urban accuses "hyperpartisan liberals" of trying to "sow fear and discontent" by suggesting that the Supreme Court could reverse its own precedent and strike down the 2015 ruling -- a move that would immediately reinstate same-sex marriage bans still on the books in 32 states.
"I am my worst critic," says Cesar Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation. "I set really ambitious deadlines for myself, sometimes unrealistic goals, but somehow, through my tenacity and just that call to public service -- and being raised in a humble home where my mom worked three jobs to raise us -- I carry that very hard work ethic with me every day. And because of that, I've been successful in my career path."
Toledo assumed the role as head of the nonprofit dedicated to serving LGBTQ homeless youth earlier this year, succeeding longtime executive director June Crenshaw, who announced she'd be stepping down last fall.
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